Closing day of Splatterfest devoted to Bruce Campbell

Sure, the original The Evil Dead is 30 years old, and the latest entry, Army of Darkness, came in 1992, but the low-budget film series that launched the careers of actor Bruce Campbell and director Sam Raimi still engenders a fond affection among those who appreciate imaginative gore relieved by tongue-in-cheek comedy.

Those fans may not be legion enough to create blockbusters, but they are passionate.

“Funny thing,” Campbell says, “I don’t see anyone getting Transformers tattoos. I have signed the entire poster of Army of Darkness on multiple people’s backs. The whole poster, on the whole back.”

If you’ve been waiting for the chance to have Campbell autograph your Evil Dead tattoo, Saturday is your golden opportunity.

The closing day of Splatterfest 2011, the horror-film festival at the Alamo Draft House West Oaks, is Bruce Campbell Day, with the star offering up that boulder chin for fan photos, signing autographs (wherever) and introducing the screening of the entire (so far) Evil Dead series. He’ll also be talking up some major Evil Dead series information, but more on that later.

Campbell attributes fan affection for the aging series to how his character, Ashley “Ash” J. Williams, differs from the lead in most gore series, such as Freddy Kruger and Friday the 13th’s Jason.

“There’s a good guy at the helm. People can relate to Ash. He has no special skills; he’s just a schmo, a guy who works in a department store. And the wizardry of Sam Raimi doesn’t hurt.”

Campbell, now 53, seems easygoing on the phone from the Miami home where he lives while shooting his co-starring role in the USA cable series Burn Notice, now in its fifth season. (His main home is in Oregon.) The cast is signed for at least one more season, which should mean lots of juicy residuals in his future, right?
“Don’t kid yourself, pal,” he says with a big laugh. “It’s cable. We’re working for tips.”

His role as former military-intel operative Sam Axe, pal of the ex-spy hero in Burn Notice, is as close as Campbell has come to being a household-name actor.

“A lot of people watch Burn Notice who wouldn’t dare watch Evil Dead,” Campbell says. “And there are Evil Dead fans who don’t even know I’m in Burn Notice. I kind of like it that way. I can go to Wal-Mart, and some people recognize me, and most people don’t.”

A native of suburban Detroit, Campbell started making films with fellow high school student Raimi in the 1970s. Their first shoestring feature, Evil Dead, was a flop when released. It took six years to break even and move into cult fandom, which led to Evil Dead 2 in 1987 and then Army of Darkness.

“Evil Dead 2 was nice because we were in profit before we made the movie,” Campbell says. “We sold it for more than we made the movie for. A lot of people consider Army of Darkness an American cult classic now, but when it came out it bombed. It’s the afterlife (video, TV) that’s made it come around.”

Meanwhile, Campbell’s career slowly climbed, with lots of mostly small movie roles and sometimes repeating series characters — Ed Billik on Ellen, Autolycus on Hercules and Xena, Bill Church Jr. on Lois & Clark — and lead roles in the series The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. and Jack of All Trades. He’s even written a biography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, and a self-parody humor novel, Make Love!* (*The Bruce Campbell Way), about getting a big role in a major Hollywood romance.
As Raimi’s career took off, he gave Campbell cameos in many of his films, including the Spider-Man series. That will hold true with Raimi’s Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz, the Great and Powerful, now filming for a 2013 release.

“I’ll shoot that in October in Detroit,” says Campbell, who won’t say more about his role. “Once you get to be a $200 million movie, they send out spies to watch you. All I can say is I’m going to give James Franco (playing Oz) a hard time.”

Also somewhere in the future may be a sequel to the inside-joke parody-horror adventure, My Name is Bruce, with Campbell playing himself, but only if he can get a good script.

“We are looking at Bruce vs. Frankenstein. We wrote a script and it sucked, and I know from experience not to shoot a script that sucks.”

We’re about to hang up when Campbell shouts he has “one last announcement for Houston.”

“We are doing the remake of the original Evil Dead. It’s not a sequel, it’s not part 4, it’s a remake. We will shoot that in New Zealand in the spring. It’s a brand-new cast, and there is no Ash character and …”

You can ask him more Saturday.

SPLATTERFEST
Saturday is Bruce Campbell Day at Splatterfest 2011, the horror film festival.
Where: Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks in West Oaks Mall, Texas 6 at Westheimer
Day pass: $27
Autographs: Noon-3 p.m.; $35
Photos: Get an 8×10 with Campbell, 4-5 p.m.; $35
Trilogy: The three Evil Dead films begin showing at 5:55 p.m. on two screens.
Info: www.splatterfest.com